Forty-five women and two girls have been mur­dered so far. With the mur­der count present­ly at 362, fe­males rep­re­sent 13 per cent of the homi­cides to date.

And while these women fell vic­tim to cold-blood­ed killers, jeal­ous lovers and men with twist­ed sex­u­al fan­tasies, hun­dreds of oth­er women re­main the vic­tims of abu­sive re­la­tion­ships, some even in the con­fines of their own homes.

Neera Ramnath

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said of the 745 peo­ple re­port­ed miss­ing for 2020 a stag­ger­ing 416 of those are women and girls—which is more than half of the miss­ing per­sons fig­ure. The po­lice said there was no con­fir­ma­tion as to how many of that num­ber re­main miss­ing.

The dis­cov­ery on Fri­day of the body of 18-year-old Ashan­ti Ri­ley, who left her San Juan home last Sun­day to at­tend her grand­moth­er’s birth­day par­ty in Co­corite has in­censed and en­raged most of the pop­u­la­tion.

ASHANTI RILEY

Ashan­ti’s nude, de­com­pos­ing body was dumped by her killers in a shal­low stream in La Canoa, San­ta Cruz. Two men, in­clud­ing a 32-year-old taxi dri­ver, are cur­rent­ly in po­lice cus­tody for her mur­der, while they con­tin­ue to hunt a third sus­pect.

Ashan­ti was picked up in a blue Nis­san Almera out­side of her Sun­shine Av­enue, San Juan home last Sun­day. CCTV footage showed the teen get­ting in­to the car, which lat­er stopped and picked up two oth­er men in San Juan.

The dri­ver of the car was de­tained by po­lice on Mon­day and af­ter four days in cus­tody broke his si­lence- pro­vid­ing po­lice with in­for­ma­tion about where Ashan­ti’s body had been dumped.

Dur­ing the five days that Ashan­ti was miss­ing, so­cial me­dia users shared her pho­tos tire­less­ly and urged any­one with in­for­ma­tion on her where­abouts to come for­ward or no­ti­fy the po­lice. As pho­tos of a smil­ing Ashan­ti flood­ed so­cial me­dia on Fri­day, many cit­i­zens ex­pressed hurt and an­guish over her mur­der.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he was pained by Ashan­ti's mur­der. He said it was un­for­tu­nate that such evil con­tin­ued to be pro­duced right here in T&T.

Row­ley, a fa­ther of two daugh­ters, said, “I too am ex­posed to that.”

Re­call­ing Mano Ben­jamin who was re­ferred to as the Beast of Biche back in the 1960s, Row­ley said it was a sim­i­lar tale.

Ben­jamin was an out­sider whom Biche chil­dren called the green-faced man but to the rest of the coun­try, he was known as the Beast of Biche. He be­came in­fa­mous af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that he had held two sis­ters, Lu­cieann and Dul­cie Ramirez, cap­tive in­side a house at the Biche quar­ry where he raped, tor­tured and abused them in the 1960s. He served 20 years in prison for his crimes. One of the sis­ters was blind­ed with acid while the oth­er was sex­u­al­ly mu­ti­lat­ed. Both women have since died.

Cindy Joseph

Row­ley said, “There is some­thing hap­pening and I men­tioned it to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the pop­u­la­tion is go­ing to have to deal with this mat­ter some­where along the line.”

The prime min­is­ter said, “There was a time in this coun­try when you could not op­er­ate a mo­tor ve­hi­cle for hire un­less you were cleared by the State to be a per­son of good char­ac­ter and your ve­hi­cle was so marked...”

He said, “every Tom, Dick and Har­ry is now be­ing grant­ed a li­cence to op­er­ate a ve­hi­cle and pick up peo­ple—this is the pos­si­bil­i­ty one faced.

Rachel Logan.

“There are in T&T to­day, a large num­ber of peo­ple op­er­at­ing mo­tor ve­hi­cles, un­known to the State’s reg­istry be­cause there is no re­al reg­istry since we dis­band­ed the sys­tem of you com­ing to li­cence your ve­hi­cle every year.

“I am com­ing to the con­clu­sion that the State does not have a good han­dle on who is op­er­at­ing mo­tor ve­hi­cles in this coun­try and among those peo­ple…many of them are peo­ple who should have noth­ing to do with pick­ing up peo­ple in that mo­tor ve­hi­cle be­cause their char­ac­ter is not a rec­om­men­da­tion to the rest of the pop­u­la­tion.”

Gabriella Dubarry

The PM said the ques­tion now was what should be done about it.

Re­in­forc­ing that per­son­al safe­ty was some­thing every­one had to pay at­ten­tion to at all times and take steps to pre­serve, Row­ley said by equip­ping peo­ple with pep­per spray and tasers to pro­tect them­selves, it might be a sit­u­a­tion where it could be used against the vic­tim as well.

He said, un­for­tu­nate­ly, there was evil in our so­ci­ety and peo­ple are di­min­ished when­ev­er such grue­some acts are com­mit­ted.

Naiee Singh

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter-Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, the UNC’s Women’s Arm, COP’s Women’s Arm, and many promi­nent cit­i­zens and en­ter­tain­ers al­so con­demned the teenag­er’s mur­der.

Mukeisha Maynard

Mem­bers of the pub­lic seemed be­wil­dered, as they lament­ed the high num­ber of women who have been mur­dered for the year so far, some of them try­ing to fath­om the ter­ri­fy­ing last mo­ments Ashan­ti faced at the hands of her killers.

Susan Seepersad

Her mur­der evoked con­dem­na­tion with peo­ple chastis­ing the po­lice for the han­dling of re­ports made by rel­a­tives when women are miss­ing. Some even called for the death penal­ty for those who com­mit heinous acts against women and chil­dren, while oth­ers called on men to do bet­ter. Women and girls are al­so be­ing urged to down­load and use fam­i­ly track­ing ap­plications to en­sure their fam­i­lies know their where­abouts when they are trav­el­ling.

But Ashan­ti’s mur­der, while heart-wrench­ing, is not unique.

Vishanie Chitbahal

The na­tion re­act­ed sim­i­lar­ly in late Sep­tem­ber when the moth­er of two, Resh­ma Kan­chan was hacked to death by her abu­sive ex-hus­band while wait­ing for a taxi in Pe­nal. Kan­chan, 25, had left Sunil Dook­ie months be­fore the at­tack. Ac­cord­ing to her moth­er, Davi­ca Kan­chan, Dook­ie stalked and abused Resh­ma un­til the day he took her life. The at­tack, which took place along a busy main road in Pe­nal, was so vi­cious, that the man al­most sev­ered Resh­ma’s head.

Af­ter he al­leged­ly killed her, the man tried to slit his own throat be­fore dri­ving off and crash­ing his ve­hi­cle a short dis­tance away.

But the ex­treme, sadis­tic vi­o­lence met­ed out to women this year was not re­served for on­ly younger women.

Lilawatie Mackhan

On No­vem­ber 11, De­ok­ie Meera Mungroo, 74, was found beat­en, bound and stran­gled at her Di­a­mond Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do home. Her body was found by her hus­band, Ram­je­w­an Mungroo, who had left her alive and well on­ly two hours be­fore.

Guimar Jose Rausseo Marcano

The Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence has said be­tween 2005 and 2015, 300 women were mur­dered in T&T. In 2017, 52 women were killed—with 43 of those mur­ders be­ing linked to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

ALLANA MOHAMMED

There have been in­creas­ing con­cerns not on­ly in this coun­try but world­wide that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the lock­downs it has forced, would on­ly ex­ac­er­bate do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and sex­u­al abuse cas­es in the homes.

In the re­cent weeks, there has been an in­creas­ing num­ber of sex­u­al as­saults and rape cas­es be­ing brought be­fore the courts lo­cal­ly, as dis­turb­ing in­for­ma­tion of young girls be­ing raped by their fa­thers, neigh­bours, fam­i­ly friends and even a church el­der sur­faced.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS sta­tis­tics, there were 352 rapes, in­cest and sex­u­al of­fences re­port­ed in 2019.

In 2019, 82 cas­es were la­belled as ‘de­tect­ed’. Up un­til Oc­to­ber 31, 2020, there were 332 cas­es re­port­ed to po­lice, while 119 cas­es were la­belled as ‘de­tect­ed’.

‘Home space not as safe’

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (CADV), Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh said T&T was fac­ing a cri­sis as it per­tains to women’s safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

She said the at­tacks on women and girls that sur­face near­ly dai­ly are a clear demon­stra­tion that they con­tin­ue to be tar­get­ed for acts of vi­o­lence.

One in every three women ex­pe­ri­ence at least one form of vi­o­lence in their lives, she said.

Ad­dress­ing the al­most-dai­ly re­ports of girls and women miss­ing, Mowlah-Baksh said the high num­ber of dis­ap­pear­ances high­light the ex­tent of the abuse that they face.

Chandramatie Rojan

“Dai­ly/week­ly re­ports of young girls dis­ap­pear­ing may be an in­di­ca­tion that they may be un­com­fort­able or ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in the space in which they are re­sid­ing. It is im­por­tant to treat each case with its own mer­it. Lis­ten to these girls, they may be sound­ing an alarm with­out be­ing in a po­si­tion to dis­close ful­ly,” she said.

“The home space is not as safe as it ought to be for many. The fact is that women and girls con­tin­ue to be harmed by those clos­est to them: part­ners, fa­thers, un­cles, broth­ers, trust­ed fam­i­ly friends, neigh­bours.”

Mowlah-Baksh said when these cas­es are re­port­ed, the blame is heaped on the vic­tims by the pub­lic.

But, she said a crit­i­cal step in ad­dress­ing vi­o­lence is treat­ing with the is­sue of the per­pe­tra­tors.

“Women and girls can do self-de­fence class­es, stay at home, in­stall bur­glar proof and alarms but the vi­o­lence will not stop un­less the source of the vi­o­lence is ad­dressed. We need to iden­ti­fy ways in which we so­cialise, sup­port, pro­tect and en­able per­pe­tra­tors of such vi­o­lence. Pre­ven­tion is crit­i­cal to elim­i­nat­ing vi­o­lence against women and girls and en­sur­ing that it does not con­tin­ue to af­fect gen­er­a­tions to come.”

She again called for prop­er train­ing for teach­ers, school-based and youth in­ter­ven­tions, gen­der-sen­si­tive par­ent­ing pro­grammes, and pro­grammes en­gag­ing boys and men in­clud­ing per­pe­tra­tor in­ter­ven­tions/bat­ter­er’s in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes.

She said the pub­lic needs to take up the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of re­port­ing abuse when they see it hap­pen­ing in their com­mu­ni­ties.

“We all must be­come ac­tive by­standers. For our part, we at CADV know it can be dif­fi­cult to know how to be ac­tive, where to start and what to do. If you know some­one is in harm’s way, let us break the si­lence.”

Bha­gan: Speed up pros­e­cu­tion of rape, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence

Caribbean Com­mit­tee Against Sex Crimes chair­man Jonathan Bha­gan said the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions needs more fund­ing to com­plete do­mes­tic vi­o­lence tri­als faster.

“The whole court sys­tem is very over­bur­dened and messy. It still takes like two, three and four months to get a pro­tec­tion or­der even if there is a fair amount of vi­o­lence that had been tak­ing place. If the mag­is­trate is sat­is­fied that the vi­o­lence was not on­go­ing or not an im­me­di­ate threat, they will let it go to tri­al and they may not get the in­ter­im pro­tec­tion or­der,” Bha­gan, an at­tor­ney, said.

He said he finds it is ab­surd that vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence have to ‘fight’ through a tri­al to be grant­ed pro­tec­tion. He al­so called for com­mu­ni­ties to do more to ad­dress the root of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence by teach­ing men to man­age their anger and emo­tions.

Deyals­ingh: Im­ple­ment spe­cial po­lice pro­to­col for miss­ing girls, women

Psy­chi­a­trist and sec­re­tary of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of T&T (APTT) Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh said there need to be spe­cial pro­to­cols put in­to place to find women and girls when they are re­port­ed miss­ing.

Dey­las­ingh told the Sun­day Guardian when some­one is re­port­ed miss­ing, their fam­i­lies have to act as search par­ties and par­ents are of­ten left try­ing to do po­lice work or be­come com­put­er and phone hack­ers try­ing to search in­to their rel­a­tives’ so­cial me­dia ac­counts for clues.

He said while 80 to 90 per cent of women and girls who go miss­ing will be found, the rel­a­tives of the re­main­ing ten per cent will al­so be haunt­ed by their un­ex­plained dis­ap­pear­ances.

“It is the re­main­ing who van­ished that would cause fam­i­ly dis­may for the rest of their lives. Fam­i­lies live in emo­tion­al lim­bo re­liv­ing the trau­ma when­ev­er they read of a miss­ing per­son or a body found,” he said.

He said this was a prob­lem not on­ly fac­ing T&T but one that plagues the en­tire re­gion.

He said some vic­tims may be cap­tured in­to hu­man traf­fick­ing and forced pros­ti­tu­tion, some run away from sex­u­al or phys­i­cal abuse or pover­ty at home, while oth­ers may be kid­napped, raped and killed by in­di­vid­u­als who prey on women.

He said some run­aways are be­cause of de­pres­sion while some are young girls leav­ing home to live with their boyfriends.

Deyals­ingh said some women are killed be­cause of their in­volve­ment in crime or as col­lat­er­al dam­age to send a mes­sage to their part­ner, who may be in­volved in crime.

Re­gard­less of the cause, he said fam­i­lies need as­sis­tance in track­ing and find­ing their loved ones when they go miss­ing.

“Dis­traught rel­a­tives would do more than an un­der­paid, over­worked po­lice of­fi­cer. They would not sleep or eat till their loved one is found,” he said.

Deyals­ingh out­lined sev­er­al points that he said can as­sist in find­ing miss­ing girls and women faster.

“We need to adopt and im­ple­ment im­me­di­ate search pro­to­cols for miss­ing women and girls in the po­lice or­ga­ni­za­tion, al­low fam­i­ly ac­cess to CCTV cam­eras footage. Our coun­try needs to de­vel­op a link with pri­vate home se­cu­ri­ty footage link­ing with the po­lice sur­veil­lance unit. We can fol­low the vic­tims’ where­abouts eas­i­er.”

OPM, Gen­der and Child Af­fairs con­demns vi­o­lence against women, girls, boys

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, (OPM-GCA) al­so strong­ly con­demned the re­cent acts of vi­o­lence per­pe­trat­ed against women, girls, and chil­dren and re­mind­ed the pub­lic that all men, women, boys and girls have the fun­da­men­tal right to live a life free from all forms of vi­o­lence.

A re­lease yes­ter­day from the OPM-GCA said do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, child abuse, rape and oth­er forms of vi­o­lence are pun­ish­able crimes.

“Gen­der-based vi­o­lence is an in­fringe­ment on one’s hu­man rights and is un­ac­cept­able and will not be tol­er­at­ed. As in­di­vid­u­als, we must make a con­scious de­ci­sion to do bet­ter and be bet­ter.

“Change starts with each in­di­vid­ual do­ing their part to end vi­o­lence against women and girls by pro­mot­ing be­hav­iours and at­ti­tudes, which will bring about in­ner peace and peace in homes and so­cial en­vi­ron­ments.”

They stat­ed that through the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, free and con­fi­den­tial coun­selling is avail­able for all.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions by the Sun­day Guardian on the women in T&T be­ing killed and abused and the dis­ap­pear­ance of young girls, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy said “The in­creased num­ber of cas­es of vi­o­lence against women and girls is of se­ri­ous con­cern to the Gov­ern­ment and to all re­sid­ing in this coun­try.

“Re­cent­ly, our sen­si­bil­i­ties were again shak­en with re­ports of killings and am­bus­cades on women, girls, and chil­dren. The Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es the fun­da­men­tal rights of all women, men, boys and girls to live a life free from vi­o­lence. How­ev­er, it is a fun­da­men­tal truth that women are im­pact­ed dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly by gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

“In­stances of such vi­o­lence against women are of­ten per­pe­trat­ed at the hands of men in in­ti­mate part­ner re­la­tion­ships, fa­mil­ial re­la­tions, and by a non-in­ti­mate male stranger.”

She said more re­cent­ly, women and girls were be­com­ing more and more the vic­tims of abuse by strange un­known men, caus­ing death and se­ri­ous life­long in­juries.

Web­ster-Roy said the sta­tis­tics re­vealed that the world over, in­clud­ing T&T, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic brought with it an es­ca­la­tion in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and oth­er forms of fam­i­ly vi­o­lence.

She said women and girls were al­so an es­ti­mat­ed 83 per cent of the vic­tims of such vi­o­lence, based on the re­port­ed cas­es.

Web­ster-Roy said the re­al­i­ty was that the coun­try had seen its own es­ca­la­tion in crimes against women, with as­sault by beat­ing ac­count­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 52 per cent of the cas­es, while threats and breach of the pro­tec­tive or­ders ac­count­ing for be­tween 20 and 23 per cent re­spec­tive­ly and there was a sim­i­lar trend in the num­ber of re­port­ed cas­es of child abuse.

She said over the years, the Gen­der Af­fairs Di­vi­sion had worked with the NGOs and UN agen­cies to change the norms and stereo­types in an ef­fort to mod­i­fy be­hav­iour sur­round­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

Web­ster-Roy said for the next three years, the Gov­ern­ment plans to scale up all its ac­tiv­i­ties in or­der to de­liv­er on the goal of gen­der equal­i­ty and the em­pow­er­ing of women and girls.

She said these in­clud­ed ef­forts to cre­ate the struc­tures to sup­port vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors via pol­i­cy and ser­vices.

This was cou­pled with pro­grammes to build aware­ness on do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and dis­cuss the core is­sues dri­ving such vi­o­lence with­in fam­i­lies, such as un­equal pow­er in all its forms.

Web­ster-Roy said this ef­fort was well sup­port­ed by the NGO com­mu­ni­ty as ev­i­dent dur­ing these 16 days of ac­tivism against gen­der-based vi­o­lence which com­menced on No­vem­ber 25, 2020.

She said do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and all forms of vi­o­lence can and will end with in­di­vid­ual and com­mu­ni­ty re­spon­si­bil­i­ty which in­di­cat­ed that it was un­ac­cept­able and will not be tol­er­at­ed.

45 women, two girls killed so far in 2020

Jan­u­ary

5- Pol­ly-Ann Chu­nis­ingh, 31, killed at her Ari­ma home along with her broth­er and un­cle by an ex-lover.

6- Jezelle Phillip was fa­tal­ly stabbed by a man she knew at the Ba­by Pre-School on George Street.

10 —Gabriel­la Du Bar­ry gunned down by a man she knew at her Av­o­cat Vil­lage, Fyz­abad home.

27 —Naiee Singh, 31, a Loan Of­fi­cer at Ven­ture Cred­it Union shot to death by a man she knew

Feb­ru­ary

7 – Cindy Joseph, 33 shot dead at her Clax­ton Bay home along with a friend.

10 – Neera Ram­nath, 39 shot dead along with Craig Hong Poi in Princes Town

11- Mukeisha May­nard, eight, beat­en to death by her fa­ther

13 – Alana Mo­hammed, 38 shot dead at her Dass Trace Branch Ex­ten­sion home in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas.

21– Rachel Lo­gan, 46 chopped to death at her Siparia home by her hus­band

23 – Joan­na Hood, 31, shot dead at her Va­len­cia home by masked in­trud­ers

28- Ces­lyn Far­rell, 69 and Seyelle Far­rah, 41, burnt to death in a house in Guapo

March

2- Ann Marie Su­san Seep­er­sad, 34, mur­dered by a de­ranged neigh­bour at her Debe home.

3- Shar­lene Ramkissoon shot dead in Acono Vil­lage Mara­cas, said to be an in­no­cent by­stander

12- Chan­dra­matie Sam­my Ro­jan, 45 shot dead at Darneaud Trace, Gas­par­il­lo in a land dis­pute.

29 - Mary Mark found shot dead in a car along with a man

April

1- Make­ba Nurse, 43, shot dead along with a man in Mor­vant

11- Sharmin James, 37, of Mal­abar found dead along with a man in a car in Trinci­ty.

22- Aaliyah Thomas, 18, found de­cap­i­tat­ed in Guapo for­est along with her boyfriend

23- Vis­hanie Chit­ba­hal, shot dead along with her broth­er, Vishal at their Cou­va home by a man who came de­mand­ing to see Vis­hanie.

MAY

18 Lilawatie Mack­han, 65 found dead in her Cunu­pia home with her hus­band Ken­neth, 62

25- Guimar Jose Rausseo Mar­cano, shot dead along with three men

JUNE-

04- Re­an­na Jor­dan, 23, shot dead in a parked car in Diego Mar­tin

5- Kathy Th­er­oulde, 56, shot to death at her Tu­na­puna home along with her son

10- Tri­cia Ram­saran, 37, al­leged­ly stran­gled by com­mon-law hus­band in Bar­rack­pore

16- Gee­ta New­man, 53 found stran­gled in her Cou­va home

17- El­lena Di­al, 19, from Carn­bee To­ba­go died af­ter she was doused with a flam­ma­ble liq­uid on Jan­u­ary 28. She was hos­pi­talised for five months.

20- Ani­ah Mcleod, two, shot dead along with her fa­ther, Stephon Mc Leod.

30- Or­nel­la Greaves, 30, shot and killed dur­ing a protest against po­lice killings along the Beetham High­way.

Ju­ly

1- Adana Dick, 36, stabbed to death by a for­mer lover in Clax­ton Bay

30-Ve­ra Gura­bie, 29, throat slit and stabbed at her Matu­ra home by her hus­band, who was a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer.

Au­gust

1- Sher­ma Fran­cis, 55, killed in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing in front of her Biche home

25- Kowsil Ramkhelawan, 71, stabbed to death in bed at her San­gre Grande home

Sep­tem­ber

02- Sher­ian Hug­gins, 29, Dan Kel­ly, Mor­vant chopped to death

05- Joann Di­az Sanchez found mur­dered at the home of her boyfriend. Her body was hid­den in a cesspit.

14- Kim­ber­ly Ram­saran, 29, found at an aban­doned house in Tu­na­puna with chop wounds to the neck

29- Resh­ma Kan­chan, 25, hacked to death by an abu­sive ex-hus­band

Oc­to­ber

14-Te­nile Cu­pid mur­dered by an ex-lover and her body dumped in a field road in San­ta Flo­ra

23- Jo­handry Es­pinosa, Venezue­lan, al­leged stran­gled by her hus­band at her Flagstaff home

31- Cindy Char­ter, 50 killed at her Co­corite home along with her hus­band

No­vem­ber

11- De­ok­ie Meera Mungroo, 74, beat­en, bound, and stran­gled at her Di­a­mond Vil­lage San Fer­nan­do home.

14- Toya Huges 31, shot dead while get­ting in­to her car in Trou Macaque

14- Uniden­ti­fied woman found dead in a car park in Port of Spain.

19- Sandy Khan 37 and her daugh­ter Stephanie Khan shot dead in Cara­pichaima

De­cem­ber

3 -Krys­tal Primus-Es­pinoza, 36 found dead in To­co

4- Ashan­ti Ri­ley, 18, found dead in San­ta Cruz af­ter miss­ing for five days

WHERE TO GET HELP

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter has part­nered with Eu­telmed and UNICEF to of­fer free and con­fi­den­tial E-coun­selling ser­vices which is avail­able 24/7.

To ac­cess this E-coun­selling ser­vice, log-on to car­ing.eu­telmed.com and en­ter the pass­word code: UNICEF-ECA to re­ceive help from com­pe­tent coun­sel­lors.

See­ing it, stop­ping it and re­port­ing all cas­es of vi­o­lence in­clud­ing child sex­u­al abuse to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice at 999, the Na­tion­al Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Hot­line at 800-SAVE (7283) and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty at 996 can save a life.

Here are some tips to help you make a dif­fer­ence in the life of some­one ex­pe­ri­enc­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and child abuse.

You can: 1: Learn all you can about abuse;

2: Teach your loved ones about the signs of a po­ten­tial vic­tim and an abuser;

3: Ac­tive­ly lis­ten to the vic­tim;

4. Do not judge or give un­so­licit­ed ad­vice and

5: Call the Na­tion­al Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Hot­line at 800-SAVE for more re­sources. (Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter)